Seven area teams earn spot in state volleyball playoffs

While seven area teams earned spots in the NCHSAA volleyball playoffs, only three got the added bonus of opening postseason play at home.

Rick Scoppe-Sports Editor

While seven area teams earned spots in the NCHSAA volleyball playoffs, only three got the added bonus of opening postseason play at home.

Southwest and Dixon, the top two seeds out of the Coastal Plains 1-A Conference, get to stay home for their playoff openers Saturday along with East Duplin, the No. 2 seed out of the East Central 2-A Conference.

Jacksonville and White Oak in 3-A and Swansboro and Croatan in 2-A open the postseason on the road. In fact the Cardinals got a head start on everyone, opening Thursday night at Wilson Hunt.

Swansboro (9-9), the ECC’s fourth seed, will play at South Columbus (11-8) today at 5:30 p.m.

East Duplin (18-2) gets Saturday started with a noon encounter with Whiteville (8-12) in Beulaville while Croatan (11-8), the 5 seeds, is on the road at West Bladen (12-4).

East Duplin heads into the playoffs a year after advancing to the East Regional semifinals, falling at Farmville Central 3-1. That should help this time around, although it won’t necessarily help the Panthers beat Whiteville.

“I definitely feel it’s a new year and you have a new team,” coach Elizabeth Turner said. “I still have some girls that are young. But for the majority of my team … I do feel like it was beneficial that we made it deep in the playoffs because they kind of know what it’s like and they’ve kind of got that eagerness and hopefully that’ll push us and make us real ready go.

“And although we lost a heart-breaking game last year to Farmville Central, I think by getting that deep my first year (as) varsity (head coach) that really set the bar high, and I feel like that’s something the girls want to get back to and put everything in to try to maintain it.”

The worrisome thing for Panther opponents is that Turner feels her team still hasn’t played up to its potential for an entire match, although that “light bulb” did seem to come on down the stretch.

“Hopefully,” she said, “that got us ready to be in the right gear for the playoffs.”

To get to that gear, Turner isn’t so much concerned about nerves as she is that her team plays with focus and purpose.

“I feel that’s the thing that’s going to help us to pull out some wins throughout playoffs or it’s going to hurt us,” she said. “We’ve got to make sure we come completely focused and that we do know that you win and you keep going and you lose and you’re done.

“That shouldn’t hurt nerve-wise. That should pump us to make sure we’re going that much more and playing with all the heart that we’ve got.”

While East Duplin closed out the regular season with 3-0 win over Northside on Tuesday, Southwest beat Pamlico 3-0 on Tuesday and followed that with a 3-1 win at Dixon in a one-game playoff for the CPC’s No. 1 playoff seed.

The Stallions hope those back-to-back wins propel them deep in the playoffs after losing in the first round a year ago.

“It shows how far we’ve come,” Southwest senior Alexis France said. “We’ve come a long way and we plan on going even farther.”

How much farther may depend, as coach Bev Marley said, on which team show up.

“If we play loose and relaxed, we do much better,” she said. “This team is different from most teams I’ve coached. They play a whole lot better relaxed and loose.”

Dixon, meanwhile, will try to rebound from a tough-to-take loss to the Stallions, but coach Heather Moore is confident her team can do just that, saying that playing such a tough foe as Southwest should “get us ready.”

“We still played up. we still played well. We still played hard. we’ve got a few things that we need to fix. Some people are just not on. We’ve got a couple hitters and setters that are not connecting. We’ll work on those things and we’ll be ready for Saturday,” she said.

“But emotionally we’ve got past the I’m not sure we’re good enough for this and now it’s we can do this. So emotionally we’re ready. Physically, gosh, we’re used to playing four and five games. We’ve done that all season long. So physically I think we’re ready.

“Mentally, in terms of once we get down, that’s one of the things that we’re going to work on at practice this week. We’ve got to learn to come back from being behind.”

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